What is Bing?

No, it's not a cherry, but it is creating quite a stir in the internet world. Bing is Microsoft's newest search engine, marketed as a "Decision Engine." Bing is designed to integrate searches to bring internet surfers better results than it's competitors Google and Yahoo. It is not a rebranding of Live Search, Microsoft's previous search engine, and is capitalizing on the internet's large ad market.

According to Greg Sterling, StatCounter showed Bing's debut resulted in a slightly higher percentage of searches than Yahoo, but was still far below Google's share of the pie. However, HitWise showed Bing falling below Yahoo but closing fast. The experts all agree, it will take time to determine just how Bing will compare to the big hitters. Microsoft has invested from $80 to $100 million dollars in marketing to get the word out.

For internet consumers, Bing offers related searches, instant-play video clips, and images in addition to targeted search results. Surfers can easily add Bing to their toolbar or set it as their preferred search engine. For internet advertisers, Melissa Mackey points out that Microsoft has incorporated features in Bing's adCenter similar to those found on Google to generate higher ROI for pay-per-click advertisers. Where Google offers AdSense and AdWords, Bing presents AdIntelligence. Sounds savvy, but only time will tell.

You won't find Bing in China, according to Patricia Resende of CIO Today. Bing, Twitter, and YouTube were blocked from Chinese view on June 2, 2009. The decision to block Bing was based on its feature that permits the user to mouse-over video clips for an instant preview. Apparently, sexually-explicit videos were viewed by children on Bing. However, users may choose from several filters, including "strict" which prevents any sexual text, video, or images from showing in the search results. These filters are found in Bing's preferences, located in the "extras" section at the top of the page.

My experience with Bing has been great. Personally, I find Bing's organization easy to navigate and the shopping and travel engines definitely reduced the amount of time I spent searching. I signed up for a Bing account, which only took a few seconds even though I did not have a previous Hotmail or MSN account. As advertised, the search results are relevant and well-organized. Bing has a clean and uncluttered feel to it, even though it's packed with content. So far, Bing gets my vote. I doubt I could ever completely give up my Google, but Bing is my new best friend.

Citations
Melissa Mackey
2009 Can Bing Really Bring It for PPC Advertisers? Search Engine Watch
http://searchenginewatch.com/3634056

By Patricia Resende
2009 Microsoft's Bing Gets Dinged by China
http://www.cio-today.com/news/Microsoft-s-Bing-Dinged-by-China/story.xhtml?story_id=0220020SIWTM

Greg Sterling
2009 Did Bing Leapfrog Yahoo? Not Exactly
http://searchengineland.com/did-bing-leapfrog-yahoo-not-exactly-20566